The One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) Secretariat has verified 11,000 persons so far with close to 2,000 persons being reached per week, particularly since the secretariat now has a full force of verification officers in Region Four, according to Verification and Customer Relations Manager, Shanelle Ferguson.
Following verification the applicant will receive a letter of approval that outlines the set ICT hub for orientation, receipt of the laptop and training, the Government Information Agency (GINA) said in a press release.
The house-to-house verification aids in clarifying applicants’ information, including their National Identification, address, up-date information such as change of address, employment, marital status and disabilities. This process ensures they are in the right priority groups, the release said.
A team of verification officers on Wednesday visited many homes in Sophia to verify the documents of several applicants in the area.
Ferguson said that the team is doing house-to-house verification of applicants in all the various fields in Sophia.
This aspect of the project will be continuous and will cover all regions in Guyana and aims at reaching the three priority groups in the first phase – single parents, differently-abled and other persons who are considered members of low-income families. There have been good responses in the other regions.
According to the release, the provision of training, technical support and internet access are being established via a network of 200 hubs, of which community-based organisations, youth groups, learning institutions and religious entities are vying to be accredited.
Meanwhile, another component has seen the evolution of the programme into a critical phase where students who were part of the school-based pilot project, which commenced in January, were given the clearance to take the laptops from the respective training hubs and into their homes.
The verification process initially began in September, and is expected to end way before the laptops arrive in Guyana.
The OLPF programme seeks to empower poor, working class and disadvantaged Guyanese with the means of developing their educational abilities, livelihood and personal ambitions through the use of technology.
The project is slated to be carried out over a two-year period and will place laptop computers in the hands of 90,000 families. The families who receive the laptops are expected to give some amount of community service, the release concluded.
